SABC to benefit from ‘must carry’ amendments
April 4, 2022
By Chris Forrester
The South African government has amended its ‘must carry’ regulations for broadcasting. Public broadcaster SABC is hoping to see a boost to its stretched finances from carriage fees.
Up until now pay-TV broadcasters have been obliged to carry SABC’s channels. The regulations now require subscription broadcasters to carry the SABC’s channels subject to commercially negotiable terms.
SABC General Manager for Regulatory Affairs, Philly Moilwa, in a statement, says the broadcaster is looking forward to negotiating in good faith with pay-TV broadcasters.
“We couldn’t be able to leverage on the profits or the returns on our content and our channels. Therefore, this decision in terms of the new regulations does remove the hindrance that was there in the old regulations of 2008. It allows us to negotiate between the parties in terms of what we believe our channels are worth in terms of value and therefore come up with something that makes business sense to the SABC. This regulation will allow the SABC to inject a lot of capital in terms of its business. We are expecting a lot of hundreds of millions out of it.”